treocentral.com >>
Stories >>
Business
News Highlights
Last week, the International CTIA WIRELESS I.T. & Entertainment 2009 conference took place with more than 15,000 exhibitors discussing the future of mobile business --from wireless health and wellness applications, to smart transportation and energy, to mobile marketing and entertainment applications.
Needless to say, announcements in the wireless space flowed as freely as alcohol in those after hours conference parties. Here are a couple of news items that should be of interest to our TreoCentral community.
On Thursday, it was announced that the CTIA Wireless Association is backing an initiative to make 3.5mm plugs the standard. An international trade group representing wireless device makers said it was backing a drive to standardize audio and USB plugs for laptops and other mobile gadgets.
CTIA Wireless Association said it is behind an initiative to make 3.5 millimeter plugs the standard for earphones, headphones AND micro-USB connections in mobile devices introduced to the market after January 2012.
The other news had to do with Google making it easier to find the exact information you need using your mobile device. In a blog post, Google talked about how a collection of tools called Search Options, introduced earlier this year for the desktop, are now available on Android/iPhone/Palm webOS devices.
The example provided had to do with shopping at a store for a camera, and how you could check to see what users have been saying about a specific model within the past week using Google's Search Options. On the search results page, use "Options" to filter by "Forums" and refine further by choosing "Past week."
There are a few points here worth noting...
1-- Google made this feature available on the iPhone and Palm webOS platforms, not just their own Android.
2-- No BlackBerry in sight!
3-- No mention of supporting the new Windows Mobile platform or making it work on any Windows Mobile platform.
 For those of you using Palm Centros, Palm OS Treos and Windows Mobile Treos, there is a speedy option available for quickly performing Internet searches. SnappySeeker by iambic, Inc. ($4.95) uses mobile friendly sites such as Google, Yahoo! Finance, Amazon and Wikipedia.
SnappySeeker lowers the number of taps it takes to get the answers sought.
iambic offers a free trial, so you might want to see for yourself.
###
|
|
|
 |
